Tongue-in-cheek fantasy film set in Baghdad and loosely based on the One Thousand and One Nights medieval story.1h 33min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy | 20 July 1945 | Color
Director: Alfred E. Green
Stars: Evelyn Keyes, Phil Silvers, Adele Jergens, Cornel Wilde.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038165/
Watched online, ok print.
Not sure how this came to my attention, but it is a borderline musical: CW (dubbed) sings 3 songs, and PS sings 1. I won't submit the additional genre, but it could be.
CW is a former Olympic fencing team member (but quit without going to the Olympics), so to have him in a sword fight here is quite natural, and extra believable.
When first unveiled (literally), I wondered if the Princess (AJ) was being played by Virginia Mayo. AJ looks and sounds like her here.
PS plays his usual character, complete with prescription glasses (very out of place in the time of the story), and cracks wise as though he's in wartime America. A bit player is even given the line that "he says he's born 1200 years too soon".
EK has top billing here as the Genie in the lamp. She looks prettier here than I've ever seen her. I like the story's rule that he who holds the lamp owns it, because the lamp is finally handed to her, and she makes good use of it. (Another rule of this lamp: if you owned the lamp, received favors from it, and then lost the lamp, everything you received from it would vanish.)
This is a pretty Technicolor production, with a decent story and players.
Columbia, dir. Green; 6
